Some people learn to meditate to relax, others need to relax so they can meditate.
Some people embrace meditation as a tool for self-discovery and spirituality; others as a means to better health; or now in the corporate world, we see a mindfulness movement towards managing stress. When you look more closely at what people access in meditation, there seems to be an inner focusing momentum within all of us, an urge to observe, essentially an in-built mode to contemplate, perceive and understand. That no matter what we do, this ‘inner tide’ or ‘urge to retreat’ will play through our existence to a greater or lesser degree. The latest understandings of the brain and neuroscience highlight the fact that the more we practice meditation, the more this inner tide grows in us and enables us to be a better human being, or at the very least a more aware human being.
This urge is possibly as necessary to the human spirit as oxygen is to the human body. Whatever your motivation and need and whatever you call it, whether prayer, visualisation, mental focus or even art, the practice of meditation will in some way influence your life. It will find you with its own uniqueness in the spaces you allow it to manifest. You may be sitting on the toilet, waiting for a bus or quietly gazing out a window – beneath these often-unconscious actions, the inner urge takes hold of you and you find yourself dreaming and reflecting.
To learn traditional meditation and to continue the practices regularly will give you benefits beyond anything you can imagine. It increases concentration, teaches you how to relax, connects you with an inner centre and allows for increased creativity and emotional freedom. Your world view expands and potentially you become a seeker of life’s mysteries.
Modern living is often filled with excesses, and the demands of these eat up much of our free time. These ever-increasing excesses compound the stress that builds up in our body, our thoughts and feelings and often takes us beyond normal tolerances. As excessive stress becomes our regular companion, our personal health, happiness and physical freedom begin to diminish. Illness and dis-ease may then start to affect our ability to function and the energy we have. The natural inner urge that sustains becomes camouflaged by exhaustion, anxiety and fatigue. When we try and meditate, we fall asleep; when we try and focus on any important issues and demands in our life, we become somewhat unconscious, and potentially apathetic to the necessary solutions. In greater and greater degrees, we essentially start switching off to the related thoughts and feelings that lie beneath the surface of our awareness of our life, until we find ourselves living unconsciously and possibly without meaning.
Samadhi ~ your call to action
Samadhi Retreat, located in the Macedon Spa region of country Victoria, can help you to renew, unwind and relax again. We offer an opportunity to create some healthy routines, which, if practiced regularly and integrated into your life, can grow to create a healthy momentum rather than unhealthy habits. We offer a curated meditational practice that – if adopted – can then become a platform for a regular meditative practice in your daily life.
The retreat experience with a meditation focus can become the foundation for a new psychological scaffolding of thoughts, feelings and personal values. You may use the time away as an opportunity to reflect on how you have been living, and to consider how to change negative habits and actions that are not serving you into the positive momentum of deep learning about yourself. A health retreat at Samadhi, the jewel of healing retreats, could well be the catalyst for change that you need right now.
